


Sha-Brytol

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Character Studies (Dragon Age) [10]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Sha-Brytol, The Descent DLC, Titans (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7252300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of a Sha-Brytol dwarf, shaped by song, and stone, and blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sha-Brytol

It is the first heartbeat of her life, and she is born.  A wailing cry cut short in the warmth of the dark by a mother bundling her close, a flurry of finger movements pressed against her small palm.  She learns, cries fading, that her voice means nothing here.  Her fingers fumble, words shaped clumsily in little hands.  

She learns her ears are meant for other things.

The mother tells her, at first, when the heartbeats come.   _Slow_ , she signs.   _Deep._   _Listen._ Small words for the little one, teaching her of what is to come.  She cannot wait to hear it for herself.  The father tells her _you will know._

 

* * *

 

It is the systole of the fourth heartbeat since her birth, and it is the first heartbeat she can _hear_.  It thrums in the walls, that song, a song that aches in bone and blood.  

The father, shimmering in metal and liquid blue, has told her many times what must come next, what they all must do when the hearing happens and they begin to _know_  the heartbeats.  Even cased in metal, his fingers are swift and crisp, his signs clear.   _It is an honor.  It is part of our sacrifice._

She stands tall.  She only weeps a little with the choke of blood, a flame-brightened blade cauterizing her tongue.  The fourth heartbeat trembles into diastole as she learns to eat again, cretahl meat and heartsblood fruit cut thin so she can bear them.  It is her duty, and she does not shy.  

**_Cut our tongue._ **

 

* * *

 

When she is healed they leave the blue-limned dark, and she flings a hand up  against the brightness.  She kneels before the heart, suffused with golden light, and she rests her hand upon the stone.  She weeps soundlessly.  It has found her worthy, the song swelling within her.  She is so small, and the song so large.

The father lays a hand on her shoulder.  The mother brushes her hair.  She watches them go, their silverite boots ringing against the stone steps.  She does not see them again.

 

* * *

 

She grows strong in the fresh air, and the brightness no longer hurts her eyes.  The heartbeat moves within her, the song that speaks.  

She tends cretahl with the other children, picks green growing things, works hard to craft things that gleam.  Their fingers are so small, so fine.  Metal bows before her, submitting itself to her.  Older children show them what to do, and so does something pulsing in the back of her mind, memories of the long ago.  It is what her people have always done.  

Hammer and tongs, flame and anvil, the instinct welling up within her.  She follows its direction.  She crafts bolts and earth-shakers, axes, shields.  The blue stains her fingers.  She sucks them clean.

 

* * *

 

It is the fifteenth heartbeat, and she bends over her own armor, working on the final joints.  The song is so strong now.  It fills her until she thinks she shines with it.   _The time is near,_  she signs to the boy harvesting in the fields.

He nods, hands quick and clever.   _You will be glorious._

They come from the blue above, metal footsteps against stone.  They move through the children, passing some by, touching others gently, taking them by the hand.   She looks up, trustingly, when a gauntlet brushes against her arm.

_It is an honor.  It is part of our sacrifice._

The binding hurts; it is agony.  She knew that it would be, for the song told her; she fights against the urge to struggle, forces herself to lay still as they encase her body, leaving little of it left untouched.  Blood and blue, metal and bone.  But the _song_  – the _heartbeat_ –  It is beautiful beyond knowledge, beyond feeling, beyond everything.

She does not hear it now.  She _is_  it.  

**_Entomb our body._ **

 

* * *

 

She had nearly forgotten the blue lands above, delicate veins gracing the earth’s bones, glimmers of azure and aquamarine in the air itself.  Her eyes still remember the heartbeats spent in darkness, though, and she moves through the blue and the dark with perfect grace.  The blue sustains her.  She is not hungry.  She does not sleep.

Others teach her what they know.  Skills of blade and axe, the cruel punch of the bolt, the weight of the shield.  It is the shield that settles to her arm, the axe that feels so true within her hand.  

She stands on the shores of an endless sea, the water’s surface coruscating in the darkness, and she breathes deep amid the heartbeat’s grace.  The waves move forward and back, the water glittering and alive, a heartbeat of a different kind.

 

* * *

 

It is the twentieth heartbeat, and she is heavy with child, walking the paths beneath the jeweled air.  The armor she built so carefully was crafted with this in mind; there are parts that can be shifted, stretched, removed.  It hurts, but yet it does not.  The boy – the man – from the fields walks beside her in metal and blue, and she feels the child stir within her, insistent kicks.  It will be healthy, she is certain of it.  The heartbeat leads her to know.

A sound – a feeling.  She and the man stop at the same time, suddenly frightened.  The heartbeat _stutters_ , the song of their blood  _skips_ , and they stare at the uppermost reach of the blue lands, the place where the caverns widen and the blue fades into the dark small-caves.  The place where the small-caves give way to the great passage… and into the upward unknown.

She hears a sound, faint, foul, _wrong_.  She has no word for it.  But she listens keenly, and she remembers her ears were to be meant for other things.  

They were not meant for voices.

She looks at the man, still, steady, strong.  The child kicks.  She signs, _We will be glorious._

He nods, and she hefts her shield, and he follows her into the dark.

_**Protect the Titan until it stirs.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Because the Bastion of the Pure is my favorite location in a video game ever, and I am continually haunted by that lyrium ocean and the sad, strange lives of the Sha-Brytol. I am fully aware I am possibly the only person super into this but hey, write what you like, right?
> 
> Also, it's really weird to write about a lifetime without the ability to use the sun or the concept of a year.


End file.
